“…This coercive, anticompetitive system has survived to this day, under government protection, resulting in the runaway costs and obscene corporate profits you would expect. This syndicate generates gigantic hospital bills, and the extent to which these bills remain uncollected provides the basis for the taxpayer subsidization known as the uncompensated care system, or disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments.

The hospital charges $100 for an aspirin, collects $5, and claims to have “lost” $95. Such false losses maintain the fiction of the hospitals’ “not for profit” status. Often, insurance companies sell their “discounting” services. For example, they may reduce a bill from $100,000 to $20,000 and collect a percentage of the false “savings.” This is the “repricing” scam. This setup perversely inclines the insurance carriers to seek out the highest bills they can find, assiduously avoiding better priced alternatives.

Nothing could be more disruptive to this syndicate than a fresh dose of the principles of the free market, more specifically, upfront and transparent pricing. Not only does reference pricing expose the health care racket, but simultaneously provides a powerful deflationary influence, as fear of the loss of patients to a better-priced facility retains great power even in this corporatist soup.”